


in the still of the dark

by objectlesson



Category: Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Genre: Armpit Stuff, Cuddling & Snuggling, First Time, Intimacy, Oral Sex, Other, Rimming, Scent Kink, Sleeping Together, Tenderness, This is Dragon sex, This is me guys there's gonna be pit licking, but with a very long dragon tongue??, like Temeraire is not a man he is a dragon the whole time I need to make that clear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:16:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28803411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: Temeraire tongues him there again, this time deeper, more experimental. He does it as he does all things: with shameless, infectious curiosity. Laurence undoes the last strained button on his shirt and shrugs out of it, raising that arm above his head to provide more access for Temeraire to taste. There are many things he cannot give his dragon, many impossibilities, many times he must tell himno, not now, my dear, I’m terribly sorryand watch the spread of disappointment course over his features. And this is why, when it is something hecanprovide, he does. Willingly, enthusiastically. Even if it is something he does not understand.
Relationships: William Laurence/Temeraire
Comments: 26
Kudos: 34





	in the still of the dark

**Author's Note:**

> My friend was like please get into this series so you can appreciate it with me. I did, and immediately wrote dragon porn, which was not at all what she wanted. Sorry Lindsey. 
> 
> Ummmm ok well! This takes place directly after part one of book one, when they get briefly separated and reunited and it's DEEPLY ROMANTIC AND IMPOSSIBLE FOR MY MONSTER FUCKER ASS TO IGNORE. Temeraire is not fully grown and I have been informed many times by aforementioned friend he is not Full Size by a long shot. I will absolutely write porn when he is, though, I am not intimidated by a big boy and neither is Will!!! That being said if porn taking place that early in the series makes you uncomfy for age related reasons then...tread lightly? Im not gonna tag my dragon blow jobs as "underage," thats just silly. I dunno when dragons are sexually mature though and at this point I don't really think Laurence does either. Just wanted to make a note if you're here for dragon dick but draw the line at possible underage dragon dick. 
> 
> Lastly, just to be extra extra clear: THERE IS SEX in this fic between A DRAGON IN DRAGON FORM and a MAN. So cowards, jump ship. The rest of you, enjoy!

Laurence startles awake from a dream, and as he blinks the figments of it still cling to him in the star-festooned darkness. Something about wind buffeting his face, streaming eyes, trees and mountain caps blurring beneath him and Temeraire. He used to have dreams of flying as a child, but it was always his own arms carrying him until they gave out and failed. Now, he dreams of Temeraire’s back beneath him, spreading his thighs, solid and sure, nearly every night since that egg cracked upon the deck of his ship, and changed everything forever. 

There’s a rustling wall beside him, the heat of his dragon’s body a restless thing. It’s only then that he realizes how tightly and possessively Temeraire is curled around him, his head a heavy, crushing weight in his lap, each breath labored and nervous and very awake. 

He lays a hand upon his head. “You are not sleeping,” he murmurs. 

Temeraire blinks, eyes glistening in the starlight before he pushes whatever he can fit of his snout under Laurence’s shirt without ripping the buttons asunder. “I cannot,” he mumbles in a small voice, so strange for such a large creature. He stays there huffing against the flutter of Laurence’s heart for a moment, breath hot and humid where it’s trapped beneath the fabric, scales soft against bare skin. “I keep having nightmares where you’re gone. Where they've taken you again and lied to me and I cannot find you.” 

Laurence lays both hands on Temeraire’s head, pushing sleep-clumsy fingers down the neck of his shirt to touch him, the spiny protrusions on his cheeks, the bones of his jaw, his narrowest point of his nose where the scales are finer and smoother than the leathery skin of his body. “My dearest,” he breathes, hooking a thumb into Temeraire’s mouth without truly meaning to, blunt nail bumping over clean white teeth. “I am here.” 

“I know,” Temeraire mumbles, tongue flicking out over Laurence’s hand, reassuringly, hot and too quick to be wet. “But it is good to be reminded so. The dreams feel real and I awaken missing you, even though you’re right beside me.” 

“I am not going anywhere,” Laurence promises, ribcage expanding beneath the weight of Temeraire’s vast head, though not enough to fill his lungs. He can’t properly breathe this way, and that alongside his grogginess has him dizzy, half-awake, floating. This feels like an extension of his dream in some ways, the view from Temeraire’s soaring back shifting muddily to this one, the crumpled, angled shape his wings and back make in the darkness, the curves of his body as Laurence is enfolded into it, suffocated beneath him. “What do you need?” he murmurs, knowing there is no limit to what he would give. Anything feels possible, here, breathless and unafraid and not quite awake, his hands a whisper away from the bone-breaking snap of teeth. 

“You,” Temeraire says, sounding miserable still as he noses his way around Laurence’s shirt, half-hidden. “Just you.” 

“I am yours,” Laurence reminds him, gasping involuntarily as Temeraire’s long, narrow tongue flicks out again, this time over his chest. He licks aimlessly, hungrily, and Laurence cannot predict the path so he relinquishes any attempt to do so. First it touches his chest, the thatch of hair between his pectorals, then up through the neck of his shirt to his stubbled cheek, and then over his ribcage, as if counting the ladder of bones there beneath the twitching sheet of muscle. It should tickle, but it does not, perhaps because the weight of Temeraire’s head upon his body and the pressure of his forelegs constricting him are enough of a distraction. It’s as if Temeraire, massive and glorious and jet-black as the whole ocean amid a storm, wants to crawl _inside_ Laurence. Fit his impossibly vast body into Laurence’s much smaller one. There is a pang of regret in Laurence’s heart that he cannot do this for Temeraire, and he knows for certain that must be the condition of loving something. Someone. That all he feels for Temeraire, though it often defies description and categorization, is at its core, love. This is not a surprise or a revelation, just a truth. He swallows it thickly, flinching as Temeraire’s tongue flicks out and into his underarm. 

“When you were gone,” he hisses, shifting closer and finally popping a button on Laurence’s shirt with his steady, insistent burrowing. “I missed the way you smelled.” 

Laurence chokes out a laugh, flattens a palm over Temeraire’s brow ridge, feeling out its shape, the way the knobs of it nudge up between his own knuckles like they are hewn to fit together. “Oh? And how do I smell?”

Temeraire tongues him there again, this time deeper, more experimental. He does it as he does all things: with shameless, infectious curiosity. Laurence undoes the last strained button on his shirt and shrugs out of it, raising that arm above his head to provide more access for Temeraire to taste. There are many things he cannot give his dragon, many impossibilities, many times he must tell him _no, not now, my dear, I’m terribly sorry_ and watch the spread of disappointment course over his features. And this is why, when it is something he _can_ provide, he does. Willingly, enthusiastically. Even if it is something he does not understand. 

Temeraire shifts up to press the whole blunt end of his snout into the humid ditch of his pit this time, inhaling, huffing, licking before pulling back with his lips curled over sharp ivory teeth, the way a stallion tastes the air when a mare is in season. It makes something hot and unexpected curl in Laurence’s gut. “Like you,” Temeraire says then, tongue passing over his own muzzle, licking traces of Laurence’s sweat from himself like he is chasing memory. “Like home. And all—all I have ever known.” 

“Oh,” Laurence murmurs, overwhelmed. He reaches up and holds Temerarie’s head between his palms, strokes up the great curve of his snout to cup the soft crinkle of his eyelids before drawing him close enough to rub his face into him, smelling himself on his scales. He presses kiss after tender kiss there upon him, until his lips are trembling, and open, and he can taste himself too. “My darling. I wish—“ but then he cuts himself off, because he does not know what he wishes. How to put words to it. By the way his stomach swoops as if he is falling, its possible there’s something improper he’s worried might touch the night are were he to speak further, and even in spite of all that he’s lost and gained, Laurence still shies away from impropriety the way any good Englishman does. 

But Temeraire is Temeraire. Shameless, curious, insistent, innocent. He nuzzles into the press of Laurence’s mouth, raising a fore claw and trapping his arm above his head, licking all over his face, his neck, the scrub of stubble where sweat is beading. Laurence turns his head and with bleary eyes, and he sees the sharp obsidian curl of Temeraire’s claw bite into the earth before sinking in several inches. There he is crucified, spread beneath him. He’s hard in his breeches where he subconsciously ruts against his underbelly, still wondering if this is a dream. “Will you let me do as I please?” Temeraire asks, eyes hooded and drowsy as he blinks, moon blue in the darkness. 

Laurence nods, gaze slipping from those powerful claws up the muscular curve of Temeraire’s neck as it arches. In the sunlight there are opalescent hues there, but in the night he is inky black, the sort of blackness that swallows everything up inside of it, and Laurence wants to be swallowed. He wants to prove he is here eternally, that nothing could pry him from beneath the static pin of Temeraire’s foreclaws. “Yes,” he murmurs, opening his mouth, letting his tongue trace clumsily along the ridges of scales that frame Temeraire’s great mouth, lips vibrating with his subsequent purr. “You may make up for the time spent missing me in sleep.” 

Temeraire cocks his head, pressing into Laurence, so careful and gentle despite his size. It is a terribly moving thing to witness, and Laurence’s breath catches in his throat, his hips lifting in idle, messy yearning. “Even if it is foolish?” 

“If you desire it, it is not foolish,” he assures him, voice muffled against Temeraire’s scales as he strokes his cheek with his free and tremulous hand. “I offer myself to you. Whatever it may take to convince you I am here, and I shall not leave again.” 

Temreaire’s mouth opens on a sudden shuddering gasp, hot air huffing out onto Laurence’s whole body in a sudden gale, tongue flicking out before curling down and around the breath of his forearm experimentally, as if he is curious to see how much of Laurence’s skin he can map out and taste. Laurence submits and puts his entire arm inside his mouth easily, hand on the slick, ridged roof of his mouth, fingers bumping over the deadly smoothness of his teeth. He is not afraid, even as Temeraire grows wetter, drool sluicing out in a froth down his arm and collecting in the crease of his elbow, dripping out his chest. Temeraire releases him, panting, licking down his chest to the heaving plane of his stomach. “I want to taste you,” he says then. “Everywhere.” 

“So be it,” Laurence agrees, cock throbbing in his breeches, straining against the leather towards the infernal, insistent heat of Temeraire’s breath. It has been very long since he was touched, and even then, never like this. Never in a way fueled by love. Never by a force night-black and sky-vast, brilliant and improbable and hungry for him. He does not know what any of it means, but he cannot question it now, when he is already half lost to it. He suspects this is how all aviators must feel—that the nature of belonging to a dragon is so preternaturally encompassing and terminal that every strand of feeling twists together like ivy growing into the branches of a tree, mistletoe encroaching upon an oak. They are inextricable. There are not human words he can bother applying to it. All he can do is let it happen. He groans aloud in the night as Temeraire nods and peels back before diving forward again and burying his snout between his thighs. 

“You smell strongest here,” he says, voice reedy. “I want it.” 

“You have it,” Laurence grits out between clenched teeth, stars in his eyes even as they are forced shut in overwhelm. He undoes the buttons of his breeches with his only free hand and tugs them down, exposing himself. “Be careful, my dearest. Men are fragile, and small. We— _ah.”_

Temeraire’s bends his head, his tongue flicking messily and desperately over anything he can reach with wild desperation. “I am careful,” he promises, wrenching his buried foreclaw from where it was sunk in the earth to free Laurence’s arm, which had just begun to go numb. He settles onto his belly, using his talons to part Laurence’s thighs, spread them wide for unfettered access. Laurence feels like a book split along its spine, and he does not mind because Temeraire loves books. “You taste of salt. Of—something else.” His tongue focuses then, flicking back and forth over the dripping crown of Laurence’s cock before curling around it, slick and filthy.

“Pleasure,” Laurence admits, chest heaving as he writhes upon his bedroll. “You’re bringing me pleasure, and that is what you taste.” 

Temeraire looks delighted to hear this, eyes flashing as he licks with deliberate precision at the exact place which makes Laurence’s thighs involuntarily flex and spasm beneath the splay of his claws. “Good,” he says, passing his tongue over his lips before he resumes his assault. “It brings me pleasure, as well.” 

As much is clear by his enthusiasm, his complacent growls and murmurs and trilling purrs as he licks. Laurence’s hair comes undone where it’s tied back, and it spreads and tangles as he lolls his head in overwhelm, strands of it sticking to the wet of his open, gasping mouth. Then he locks up and gasps because Temeraire is prodding lower, beneath the weight of his balls and into the crack of his ass, nudging insistently at his hole, making him filthy wet there as his spine rolls towards the pressure. He is thinking _surely,_ surely _his tongue is not so dexterous and strong as to—_ but then, so suddenly, it does. His body breaches and opens and Temeraire is licking _inside_ him, deep and desperate as his cock pulses fluid onto the plane of his drawn taut stomach. He takes himself in hand and strokes his cock furiously, trembling closer to orgasm until Temeraire realizes what he’s doing, withdraws, and knocks his hand away with his spit-wet snout. “Let me do it,” he begs, breath hot, ghosting against Laurence’s body in encompassing gales and making his gut plunge in want. “You’re mine.” 

Laurence nods fiercely, voice lost to gasps as Temeraire licks him again, practiced and careful and determined. His eyes remain wide to study Laurence as he shivers, body a wreck of muscle spasm and slick sweat as he thrusts into the messy wet flick of his dragon’s tongue. Temeraire is so focused it’s almost _too_ much to take, but he notices and adjusts to the way Laurence is shaking and flinching at the deliberate, repeated attention to the crown and so pulls back, studying Laurence’s anatomy for a moment before he begins again. This time he wraps his tongue around the length and slides down, pumping him as Laurence pumped himself with his own hand, so clever and so attentive and _oh—_ just like that Laurence is spilling onto his own abdominal muscles, groaning with his head tilted back, his throat extended, thighs in tremor beneath the prying force of Temeraire’s claws. 

Temerapire purrs as he licks up his come, cleaning him very sweetly and prudently before he hikes him up with one claw curled around his leg and while cupping his backside in the palm of his other, lifting Laurence’s hips off the the ground so he can resume licking him _out,_ fucking in and out of his body with dutiful intensity. It’s _tremendous,_ so overwhelming Laurence can only gasp and brace himself, body reduced to a willing sleeve for his dragon’s tongue as he grips at his bedroll and rides the swell of sensation as if he is but a ship tossed at sea. Temeraire is not hard, not to his knowledge. He _looked_ to see if he was rutting against the earth as this all happened, but it’s possible he’s not even reached sexual maturity yet, and furthermore Laurence knows little of his anatomy in that regard in the first place, so he has no _idea,_ really _,_ what Temeraire is getting out of this exchange save for the simple pleasure of seeing his Captain undone, pleasure stricken, sweat-slick and flushed and desperate. Eventually he must reach some form of satisfaction, however, because he stops and sets Laurence back down gently, wiping his great head on the inside of his thigh, and lowering himself down onto his side to curl around him once again. “Thank you,” he says. “I very much like the way you taste. And I very much like that you are all mine. All of you.” 

So it is that, then, which Temeraire desires—the flavor, the intimacy, the possession. Laurence smiles at him fondly, reaches up and lays a sweat-sticky palm upon his cheek, drawing him close enough to press his face into the soft heat of his scales. “My remarkable creature,” he mumbles. “And most treasured friend. You are correct—there is none of me that is not yours to have as you wish.” 

Temeraire snuffles in his loose hair, sending strands of it lifting like cornsilk with a heavy sigh. “I will try to remember this, even in my dreams.” 

He does not wake again after drifting off, and so, Laurence can only hope that it worked. 


End file.
